Human Resources McKinsey & Company's claim to be looking for university graduates who are not satisfied with the first best solution has been dramatized by the Ruf Lanz agency in a whole series of amazing recruitment measures since 2004. For example, a pencil with an extra-long eraser as a give-away. This deviation from the norm (which won awards in London, New York and Cannes, among others) was so well received that the pencil is now also causing a stir in advertisements.

Every year, Swiss Marketing, formerly the Swiss Sales and Marketing Managers Club, looks for the best market performance. The deadline is December 31, 2006, and the winners will be announced on Marketing Day on March 13, 2007 at the KKL in front of an expert audience. All companies based in Switzerland and Liechtenstein are eligible to take part. The marketing achievements of the companies are compared within the categories of large companies (GU), medium-sized companies (MU), small companies (KU) and non-profit organizations (NPO). Swiss Marketing presented the first award for innovative marketing projects back in 1976. Registration and regulations can be downloaded from the Internet at www.marketing-trophy.ch.

Banks Bank Coop has long been pursuing ethical principles - recently with a witty and eye-catching campaign. Showmanship with depth? Can they go together? It can, as the new Bank Coop product campaign shows. It is not sustainable funds or mortgages that are advertised here with politically over-correct motifs. Rather, the sensibly used, i.e. saved, resources are addressed in the advertising itself in practically all advertising channels. What sounds so theoretical and conceptual is, thanks to the ingenuity of the in-house agency Ruf Lanz, convincing in a number of unusual implementations for the financial sector. Here, the CD duo let the various above- and below-the-line media document the bank's attitude with witty and highly visible savings exercises: The advertisements stood out as the opening pages of the bundle, which were also cut in half across the entire newspaper portrait format. The explanation for this reader-unfriendly eye-catcher was provided by the "decent bank" - as its claim goes - in the copy: "Our sustainable investment funds already conserve resources in advertising. That's why we have reduced paper consumption by 54 percent." The advertising idea naturally has a wide, creative potential for media-compliant implementation. At present, it ranges from paper-saving or disruptively unlit poster sites to sandwich men who are sent out onto the streets equipped with significantly smaller signs - ideally in the immediate vicinity of the competition. "The carriers themselves also benefit from this," smiles Markus Ruf. "They only have to carry light loads around." Radical savings are also being made with the already inexpensive advertising medium of cinema slides - by switching off the projectors for seconds and plunging the auditoriums into total darkness.
Focus on sustainabilityAlthough the campaign has a certain moral content and coincides with an upturn in the economy, the issue of the sustainable use of investors' money is likely to be heard more than ever before. On the one hand, the last stock market crash has shaken blind faith in shares and revived the Swiss virtue of thriftiness. On the other hand, performance comparisons between passively and actively managed funds and the speculation of pension fund managers are poisoning confidence in the financial sector. The vast majority of small savers are therefore very receptive to transparent communication and ethical corporate and business practices.
The campaign is also given credibility by a fund savings plan test published in K-Tipp and K-Geld, in which Bank Coop's conditions came out on top.
However, the campaign makes no reference to this and remains sparing in its arguments, referring only to the bank's website and the investment, asset management and mortgage products explained there. Sensitized customers can see that the products selected by the Sustainability Advisory Board meet the high quality standards and also boast excellent returns. And this, as well as the advertising, which has been shaped and varied by Ruf Lanz for four years, reinforces the model recognition profile of the "decent bank".                        
Luca Aloisi

After the poster campaign with its portraits of outsiders has already won several awards, Publicis has now produced a film for the street magazine Surprise. The spot begins with a typical situation of marginalized people in a street kitchen. Then a public telephone rings insistently in the background. One of the marginalized people answers the phone and gives his securities dealer harsh instructions about stock market transactions. The slogan provides the explanation: "We make a career possible for everyone. Surprise". The commercial runs throughout the fall in cinemas all over Switzerland.

Matthias Müller has been the new Marketing Director at BT Switzerland since the beginning of August. Müller joins BT Switzerland from Oracle, where he was most recently Principal Marketing Manager for Switzerland and Austria. Previously, Matthias Müller held management positions at Apple, Microsoft and PSINet, among others. He will be based in Glattbrugg and will report directly to Philippe Tarcher (Vice President Country Marketing EMEA, BT Global Services).

The increased competition in north-western Switzerland is not only having editorial consequences: According to a report in Onlinereport, the Basler Zeitung (BaZ) is making preparations to take the advertising business "at least partially" into its own hands.

The BaZ management has not been satisfied with the acquisition performance and customer care of PubliGroupe (Publicitas) for some time. As a full leaseholder, PubliGroupe is solely responsible for advertising placement in the BaZ. However, PubliGroupe also supplies the Mitteland Zeitung and Basellandschaftliche Zeitung with advertisements.

Aggressive advertisingBaZ plans to advertise the "combat" instrument of large circulation itself. In particular, the contested area is to be advertised aggressively. PubliGroupe can only do this with the handbrake on, as it also has to serve the publishers in Liestal and Baden.
There were indications that BaZ had already made preparations last year to take the vital advertising business into its own hands. A year ago, Publicitas director Roland Steffen was appointed publishing director, who immediately founded the BaZ subsidiary and advertising agency Keymedia. And within the publishing house, five employees now acquire advertisements specifically for the Friday large circulation. PubliGroupe is only contractually guaranteed to manage the core circulation, but not the new products.
Servant of many masters However, PubliGroupe and Basler Zeitung are closely interlinked. PubliGroupe holds a strong minority stake of 37 percent in BaZ. PubliGroupe CEO Hans-Peter Rohner and Group Executive Board member Otto Meier are members of the BaZ Board of Directors. BaZ President Matthias Hagemann and Group CEO Beat Meyer told Onlinereports that PubliGroupe is now caught up in a conflict of interest as it has to serve several masters.
Loss of independence? In the intensified press competition in north-western Switzerland, BaZ no longer wants to be kept on a tight leash by its advertising space tenant, writes Onlinereports. PubliGroupe risked its trust capital as an independent company when it acquired a stake in Freie Presse Holding (NZZ) in the Zurich area. There is also a joint venture with Südostschweiz in Graubünden. Should PubliGroupe wish to sell its holdings in BaZ, BaZ would not be worried. Because it would have the right of first refusal.

Thomas Gsponer is the new Director of the Swiss Association for Visual Communication Viscom. Gsponer was elected by the association's central board on August 30, 2006 and succeeds Hans-Ulrich Bigler, who was appointed the new director of Swissmem (service center for the mechanical, electrical and metal industries) in May. Gsponer was head of economic development in Upper Valais, worked as association secretary and has been director of the Valais Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the umbrella organization of the Valais economy, since 1991. He is a member of numerous cantonal economic and expert commissions and was also a member of the cantonal legislature for eight years, serving as parliamentary group president and president of important parliamentary commissions. With around 900 member companies, Viscom is the leading employers' and entrepreneurs' association in the visual communication sector.

The government is requesting a national contribution of 1.5 million Swiss francs to finance the operation of Radio Liechtenstein for 2007. Although the restructured state broadcaster is on the road to recovery and is in the black for the first time (see Radio Liechtenstein is in the black), the experience of recent years shows that Liechtensteinische Rundfunk will still not be able to fulfill its statutory mandate in a cost-covering manner. SDA reports that additional funding is therefore required in addition to advertising revenue.

Research In the third part of the Publisuisse study series "TV - Medium of the Future", more than half of the representatives of the advertising industry give the most credit to outdoor advertising.According to the Swiss Advertising Statistics Foundation, the press has a market share of 42 percent of net advertising sales in 2005, followed by direct advertising with 24 percent, TV with 11 percent and outdoor advertising with 10 percent. Radio accounts for just 3 percent, cinema for less than 1 percent - and advertising media such as Internet, mobile and ad screen do not even appear in the statistics.Young media will growWhich media will become more important in the media mix in future? It is the young media Internet, mobile and ad screen - they can almost only grow. This is the view of 556 people from advertising and media agencies as well as advertising companies who were surveyed as part of the Publisuisse study series "TV - Medium of the Future": A very clear majority (58 to 91 percent) of the almost 400 respondents believe that the Internet, interactive media (mobile) and ad screen will at least slightly increase in importance in the media mix, whereas only a minority of respondents believe this to be the case for traditional advertising media (including TV) (see chart).
And yet: as many as 11% of respondents still (or again?) see growth potential in the print medium with its high market share. On the other hand, there are apparently widespread doubts about the suitability of ad screen: over 40 percent state that the young advertising medium has already reached its zenith. In the case of TV, more than 50 percent are of this opinion, even though the medium has a low market share in Switzerland compared to other European countries. However, out-of-home advertising has the brightest future overall: 26% of respondents believe that its market share, which is known to be the highest in Europe, will continue to grow, a full 62% believe that it will at least remain stable, and only 12% believe that the importance of posters in the media mix will diminish. This makes outdoor advertising the medium of the future, so to speak: it occupies a leading position in Europe in terms of share, continues to receive a great deal of credit from the advertising industry and therefore has the least to fear for its position - despite increasing advertising bans and industry disputes over the correct method of measuring reach. In short: the poster medium appears to be indispensable for the advertising industry and can hardly be replaced.
The study also shows that a certain optimism currently prevails in the advertising industry. This is because in all media categories without exception, those voices that forecast stable to growing importance for the respective advertising medium in the media mix are in the majority. No medium is clearly on the losing side. It can be deduced from this that the majority of advertising industry representatives surveyed expect the advertising pie to grow.
Two further results of the study deserve attention: it is clear that most of the new technologies are of little importance in the everyday marketing activities of the advertising companies and agencies surveyed. The majority of respondents are not currently involved with developments such as IPTV, mobile TV, HDTV or TV on demand: for example, the topic of "TV on demand" still plays no role at all for around 81% of respondents. The Swiss advertising industry is most concerned with ad screens and interactive media. Most participants believe that the greatest challenge for the future will be to maintain an overview of the various new possibilities, and they also urge the development of meaningful measurement methods for the new media.
Study with flawsThis survey of 556 people from the advertising industry forms the third part of the "TV - Medium of the Future" series of studies. In the first part of the extensive Publisuisse research project, a good three dozen technology and TV providers were surveyed. They drew up a ranking list of what they considered to be the eleven most important technological developments and trends for TV use in the future (WW 20/06). In the second part of the study, the needs and wishes of 35 TV consumers were compared (WW 21/06). The third study, which is now available, was designed to incorporate the views of the advertising industry. This third survey took place in the form of an online survey from June 28 to July 21, 2006 - a flaw in terms of timing. It must be assumed that the majority of respondents were familiar with the results of the two previous parts of the study. In any case, they ranked the eleven trends almost identically to the TV consumers.
Bad luck for PublisuisseA study
It is tricky to call TV the medium of the future even before the first results are available. Especially when another genre then emerges as the medium of the future. Publisuisse is also inconvenienced by a survey conducted by the Düsseldorf advertising agency Interone Worldwide, a subsidiary of the BBDO Group. It asked 1000 people between the ages of 14 and 49 about their media usage behavior. The trend among young people is clear: away from TV and towards cell phones and the Internet. However, online services such as E-Bay and Amazon have also established themselves among older users. In terms of spontaneous purchases, the Internet has already surpassed television (34.5%) with 36.7%.
                  
Markus Knöpfli

Carsten Roetz will become the new media spokesman for the Swisscom Group as of September 1, 2006. Roetz was previously Head of Product PR at Swisscom Mobile. He succeeds Pia Colombo. The media service is now made up of: Sepp Huber (Head), Carsten Roetz, Christian Neuhaus, Sepp Frey (Regional). Andrea Tröhler is the assistant to the spokesperson team.

Research Around 50 websites want real audience reach from Wemf. For a long time, it was unclear whether Net-Metrix, the new internet research by Wemf and SRG, would come to fruition - until the beginning of July, when the two companies were able to announce after a second round of bidding: "The new research model for investigating internet usage will be realized." However, the final decision was dependent on the websites' willingness to participate, but Wemf left open at the time how many had registered for the existing Net-Audit module and at the same time for the new Net-Profile onsite survey. This is now also clear: Christine Diemand, responsible for Net-Metrix at Wemf, speaks of 45 to 50 websites that booked both modules by the end of the extended registration deadline on July 20.
Around 150 other sites continue to make do with Net-Audit. However, Net-Audit also gained a few new customers - not least from the radio and TV industry, as the module can now measure streaming, i.e. also radio and TV consumption via the Internet.
As before, Net-Audit data will be published monthly, while the combined data from Net-Audit and Net-Profile will be published for the first time in spring 2007 and then every six months. The difference: While Net-Audit alone only indicates how many PCs access a website (unique client), the combination of both modules in the online sector makes it possible for the first time to show the reach of individuals (this combination is only insufficient for reach data for streaming).
Net-Metrix also has a third module, Net-Tracking, an Internet panel set up by the company Mediapulse (ex-SRG research service). It primarily serves as a strategic tool in online research, but for the first time it can also be used to make statements about Internet use from home PCs as well as out-of-home use.
If panel data is also combined with Net-Audit, audience reach is also available for streaming. According to Markus Jufer from Mediapulse, recruitment of the 3,000 panelists will begin at the start of September. The aim is to collect data from October and publish the first results in December. However, Jufer does not yet want to disclose the number of his clients.   
Markus Knöpfli

Since August 17, "Anastacia by S.Oliver," the joint fashion line of the fashion company S. Oliver and pop star Anastacia, has been available in stores throughout Europe and via the online store at Anastaciabysoliver.com. To ensure that Anastacia's collection can also be experienced in multimedia, the website was equipped with a special feature by Sonar Brandandmusic, a consulting agency in the field of acoustic brand management: Anastacia Webradio. This should not only make the website acoustically and emotionally experienceable, but also present Anastacia's whole personality on the website, explains Ralf Drotleff, Managing Director Creation at Sonar Brandandmusic.